This application claims the benefit of Korean Patent Application No. 10-2004-0039983, filed on Jun. 2, 2004, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of producing a substrate having a patterned organosilane layer and a method of using the substrate having the patterned organosilane layer.
2. Description of the Related Art
A method of patterning a thin organosilane layer comprising a self-assembled monolayer is known. In general, an organosilane layer is patterned using photolithography. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,688,642 describes a method of producing a substrate having a patterned organosilane layer. In the method, a substrate having a hydroxyl group is coated with organosilane, exposed to UV light (193 nm) using a lithographic mask and etched the exposed portion. The etching of the organosilane layer is performed by dry etching. That is, the organosilane layer is selectively exposed to the UV light for a long time and the exposed layer is selectively removed. However, such a dry etching requires considerable time and can be applied only to an organosilane compound which is reactive to UV light having a specific wavelength.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,474,796 describes a method of producing an array plate using photolithography. First, a photoresist is coated on a substrate and exposed to light and developed to form a patterned region composed of a first exposed surface and a surface coated with the photoresist. Then, the first exposed surface is reacted with fluoroalkylsilane to form a stable hydrophobic fluoroalkylsiloxane matrix on the first exposed surface. Next, the photoresist layer is removed to form a second exposed surface. Then, the second exposed surface is reacted with a hydroxy or aminoakylsilane group so as to convert the second exposed surface to a hydrophilic binding region. Thus, the substrate has the hydrophilic binding region composed of the hydroxy or aminoakylsilane group and the hydrophobic non-binding region composed of fluoroalkylsiloxane. In this method, the pattern is formed by selectively removing the photoresist and directly etching the organosilane layer.
In the conventional methods described above, the thin organosilane layer comprising the self assembled monolayer is directly patterned using the dry etching or, without directly forming a pattern on the organosilane layer, the photoresist is selectively removed to form a pattern and then, selectively reacted with the organosilane layer to obtain a pattern. Thus, a method in which a thin organosilane layer is directly patterned using a wet etching has not been reported. The present inventors conducted research on a method of wet etching a thin organosilane layer which can be performed in a quicker and simpler manner and in larger scale compared to the dry etching method and discovered that an organosilane layer may be etched using a HF-containing solution.